Closing out my last night at this school with Curren$y
I’ve always wanted to leave a mark at this school, you know, something that people would remember me by. Like, whether or not people actually give a shit, rapping is my getaway from all the shit that your average teenager goes through or even puts himself through now that I think about it. Yeah, I rap about smoking tree and drinking brews, like a lot of rappers do. Maybe that’s generic, but honestly I don’t care. I used to listen to shit like Atmosphere, Aesop Rock, Eyedea and Abilities, all these incredible rappers with a stream of consciousness flow that I thought I could replicate. I got tired of that though, I couldn’t just keep feeling sorry for myself over a beat. I started listening to more Weezy, Curren$y, Dom, Wiz, Mac, The Cool Kids, etc. and started to develop my own style, my own flow that had some cockiness in it. Writing became fun, more of a hobby than an outlet for anger, and I’m proud of the tracks that I’ve been on, both solo and as part of Junky Affiliated (stay affiliated, friends). I’ve practiced a lot, and I’ve gained a lot more confidence as an artist than I had two years ago when I started doing this shit. Now I know I’m not most popular kid on campus, I mean, I’m a weird kid, I get that, and I’m totally cool with it. I’m me. That’s all I want. But it was a fucking sick experience to have the DJ drop the Empire State of Mind instrumental and hand me a microphone to lay down the first stoner bars I ever wrote. I was nervous as shit, like, this was the biggest crowd I’ve ever rapped in front of. I’m used to rapping with a few friends, writing, freestyling or whatever. Without even thinking about it, I closed my eyes and just started laying down the lyrics to Cooked (http://soundcloud.com/blindscientist/burnt), the first single I put out as Scrub (aka DJ Scrub, Scrub MC, Scrub Mitchell, Young Jedi, The Drunken Master… The list probably goes on, I call myself all sorts of weird shit when I rap). The set up was kinda ass due to the delay on the microphone. Every line I said came out of the speakers about .2 or .3 seconds after I spit them (I think that’s a latency problem, but I’m not sure), and it was tough to get used to. I’ve also had pretty bad allergies recently, so that combined with my nervousness made my voice crack a ton, but I just kept on going, knowing it would be better to push on through the distracting shit than to just give up and stop. Fuck that. You give me a microphone, I’m giving you a performance, whether I sound like shit or not. This was it for me. I’m not a notable player on any sports team here, or that really funny kid that absolutely everybody loves. Like, in reality, I’m a fairly awkward looking/acting white kid who raps about drugs, but shit happens. I’ve put my identity into rapping, because I think rapping’s what I do best. I don’t think a ton of people know (or I guess at this point, knew) that, because I don’t like to just shove it in random kids’ faces. I always picture a really shitty mc trying to promote his music and just telling people ‘yo dig this fresh mixtape i dropped, bronugget, like, it’s like ten times doper than Detox is gonna be when it comes out.’ Fuck that, I know I’m not lyrically gifted, that’s chill, holmes. I make up for it with my dope flow haha. I’m getting off track here. Anyway, at the rate I was going, I didn’t really think I going to do anything special or big before I graduated and left this fucking dump of a boarding school forever. I just didn’t have anything special to leave behind, or at least I didn’t really think I did. But when I opened my eyes about 8 bars in, I saw an entire crowd of people dancing around me, cheering, jamming out to what I was spitting. The highlight of it all was easily the moment when I spit the bars ‘so how bout you, how bout me/how bout we go smoke some trees/I got that fuego in my pocket, can I snag some papers please’ and people just started pushing forward around me, making hella noise (yeah, i just said hella, can’t think of a better word to use here) as I dropped into a squat to deliver the last lines of the song. When I got up, it was over. Handed the mic back to the DJ, snagged some daps from people who dug the rap, and got ready to leave. Tonight’s the night I’m gonna remember years from now.
